Multinational peacekeeping in the Middle East and the United Nations Model.

International peacekeeping has gone through a number of interesting and important twists and turns in recent times. The establishment in 1973 of the second United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai Peninsula served to reinvigorate peacekeeping in the United Nations, and a good deal of consensus on peacekeeping as a useful tool of the UN was then quickly achieved. The bulk of this consensus has survived, and there is much evidence to suggest that recourse to UN peacekeeping is still thought by states to be a leading option when the occasion arises. In the wake of the Camp David accords and Israel's invasion of Lebanon, however, politics again intervened in the United Nations. The result was that despite the favourable view of UN peacekeeping, two major multinational operations have recently been instituted outside UN auspices: that in the Sinai Peninsula, which continues in full operation; and that in Beirut, which ceased to exist in early 1984. In many ways, these establish precedents and offer striking lessons on how, and how not, to structure and manage a peacekeeping operation.
This article will examine the process by which both these operations were brought into being--and how that in Beirut came to end--and assess their mandates and functions. The activities, actual and potential, of the United Nations in the area will also be discussed.[1] Finally, some analysis will be offered by way of comparing a UN peacekeeping model with the multinational (non-UN) operations in the Middle East. A certain practical emphasis on the role of the United States in the multinational operations is admitted, though this implies a no less significant role for the other participating countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]